1st Day Selling IPods

Yesterday I had listed 3 of my 4gb Ipod Nanos. At the time of purchase, I went into it hoping for a profit of $10 each, which would have brought my expected profit between $350 and $400. Happy was my surprise when I was expecting 22 good and 18 bad Ipods and it turned out to be 29 good and 11 bad ones. All that would be extra profit for me since I can obviously sell a working one for more than a broken one.

I bought them expecting to sell them for a minimum of $80 for the good ones. The first three IPods I sold today went for $91, $96 and $116. One of them had no accessories and was beaten to death. It amazes me what people will pay for an IPod. Crazy.

I don't know if you can do the math, but I made as much profit today selling 3 IPods as I did working for 8 hours. Grand total spent on buying,refurbrishing, and selling these three was under 1 hour.

Tomorrow, I have 5 of those bad boys selling on EBay. Can't wait to see how well they do. No wonder I was always being out bid when i tried to buy them. Lot's of money to be made. Of course, that's only if they aren't broken, which I really had no idea about before I bought them. looks like this will pay off very well for me. Sweet.

Wholesalers

The different companies I am dealing with seem a little hit or miss. One sent me five catalogs in the mail with a welcome letter, another charged $15 and sent me a package of materials, and others didn't even lift a finger. Some gave me nice Excel database spreadsheets with all products listed complete, and others had half assed ones I had to manually update, and others don't have anything at all.

So, lets be honest here, why would I deal with a company that would make me manually enter 500 products by hand (6 hours), and the next company has a simple modify and upload to my server (15 minutes). Gee, which company do you think I'll be dealing with?

So far, I have a Game site mostly setup. I have Adult toys and lingerie coming soon. I also expect to do one for Tools as well. Once I finish setting up this first Site, the others should be little more than copying the website server files into a new folder and uploading different images and data.

I finally used OSCommerce Website. Configuring it was a pain in the PHP ass. Every bell and whistle had to be hand coded into it. However, now that it is mostly done, I really like the way it turned out. It's useful, looks good, and does everything I want it to.

Ipods Arrived

So, I bought 40 Ipod Nano 4GB 1st Gen. It cost $2140.00 and it was expect to have 22 Good and 18 Bad. If this was true, I calculated a profit of about $350. I've had a chance to go through about 1/2 the box and so far I have found 4 bad and 20 good. This is amazing because unless the other 16 are broken in half, I am going to make a nice profit on this. I estimate if I have 8 bad ones and 32 good ones, I'll profit about $850 which is 40% return on my money. Nice. Really Nice. I expect to start listing them on Ebay later today or tomorrow.

As I had expected, the reason most of them were returned (to Best Buy) was because the consumers were idiots. Many had a Folder with Exclamation when you turned it on. All they needed was to be reformatted and updated. I could see why they were returned, but come on people. Do a little research, huh? oh well, my profit. Three had bad LCD's, so those would be lost causes, but I have another that won't boot up. So if I can't get that one going, I'll just open them up and swap parts. Otherwise I'll ebay the broken ones as parts and get about $30 each.

Wholeselling

The other day I signed up for a Business License. It cost me $50 and was delivered a day later, I was quite surprised, seeing as how I was dealing with the state. I then spent about 5 hours today going to different wholesellers and filling out their applications and sending faxes of the permit and whatever else they wanted from me. The whole process in dealing with them is terribly slow. Even if they responded right away, I still have to wait for packages to arrive in the mail. I'm not quite sure why this stuff needed to be mailed instead of emailed, but hey, whatever.

I've also spent several days screwing around with various shopping cart software. So far, they all seem to suck setting them up. I'm not quite sure exactly what I am looking for in the software, but different ones had different drawbacks in design that left me unhappy. Once I find one I like, I should be able to setup a store with minimal work if they can include a database to import. If not, entering all that stuff in by hand is gonna suck.

Ticket Scalping

A few months back I had took at shop at Ticket Scalping. I bought about $1000 worth of tickets, at various venue's for the TranSiberean Orchestra. It took me two months, but I have sold the tickets and made about $500 profit. I sold two sets from Ebay, none from CraigsList, and mostly from StubHub. I would check in weekly and adjust the price to reflect the going rates. As long as I don't plan on needing the money anytime soon, i would definitely do this again.

I would advise no more than 6 tickets per show. For example, I bought for three shows. One show sold all 6 tickets within 2 weeks. The next show sold within a month, and this last show took 2 months and has had quite a bit of competition. Since you never seem to know before hand, diversifying was a good idea to keep the money flowing back in. I would also, likely, not bother selling on ebay again because of the expiring listings and added cost of shipping. CraigsList is free, but people wanted tickets at cost or less. StubHub clients were willing to pay a premium for the tickets, so even with StubHub's high fees, it was still worth it to use them.

Banks and Companies Suck

I can't begin to tell you how much I hate banks and large companies. In this case, FNBODirect.com that I painfully signed up with a few months back. It was a hassle to start the account, maintain the account, and now access my money when I needed it. They wouldn't Wire Funds to another bank (wasting days before telling me). They would transfer money back to my original checking account, but it takes like a full business week. to do this. It's slow as dirt! So, I need to make a payment for this Ipod order, so I paid from my private funds, but I have bills that are due tomorrow, and this transfer was still slugging along. So, I had to log onto FNBO website and figure out how to activate this ATM card they gave me (thankfully I called up to request it!), then went to the bank and withdrew the max they would allow me to so I could put it back into my checking and pay who needed to be paid. this made me late for work, having to deal with this added time waster.

So, I loose any interest this month that I would have otherwise made because the $2000 transfer is no longer collecting interest, the ATM $1000 is no longer collecting interest, the Fees from the ATM transfer (both banks), then the time it is going to take to transfer this $1000 back to the savings account when the $2000 arrives. Lastly, I lost 1/2 hour pay from work because it took me so long to deal with this mess. At least i won't get any added late fees from bills that i couldn't pay, or from the liquidators who threated a $300 fee for being more than 2 days with payment.

At least, in the future, I will know how to properly deal with this slow bank, what not to expect from them, and how much cash I need to easily access to run my business.

CubeCart

I found a free eCommerce Shopping Cart called CubeCart. I will be using that to setup my various stores with. I had previously downloaded one called ZenCart, but the configuration on it was assed-backwards. They gave the software away for free, but charged you for manual. WTF?!? Screw that.

I plan on opening three stores. One with Porn, another with Games, and another with self-help guides... like this site... except i will charge for it. I know plenty about stuff that I can sell information about. Three on my mind are buying real estate, advanced real estate investing, and now wholesaling. I know, I just started it, but I certainly don't need to charge $269 like I just paid. Pass along he same information for like $20 bucks or something. then charge extra for the actual list maybe. It's all about the up-sell right?

Liquidation Bid

I have been been trying to get into a nice score with liquidation.com. It has proven to be difficult since I can't for the life of me figure out how these people plan to sell this stuff at a profit since they bid so high for the merchandise. The big thing for me, is that the listing don't really mention the true condition of the stuff. Does it come with boxes and manuals, or is just thrown in a box and left for dead? Seems to be a bit both, but I am bidding while I assume the stuff is broken, and they are assuming it's in full working order. Well, hey, they are the ones who may lose a ton on broken stuff.

I wanted to make sure that my bids were fast and accurate so I made an Excel spreadsheet that would allow me to quickly enter in key elements of the sale, and then have it spit back all kinds of useful information, like what my top bid should be. So far, my bids have been well under what it sold for.

Today I got lucky (maybe) and I won an auction for 40 4GB Ipod Nanos at $2,000.00. Yes, the price seems steep, but the payoff should generate several hundred for me in the next two weeks. On Ebay they sell like hotcakes at $80.00+ each and I picked them up for about $50.00 each. So, even with the ebay fees and what not, I should walk away with a little smile on my face. I'll let you know.

Liquidation

I have solved the "How do they sell for so little on Ebay" question. As I had suspected, vendors go to sites such as liquidation.com and bid on boxes and pallets of stuff. Basically, you buy large quantities of stuff for several hundred dollars each, and then hope for the best.

In many cases, you don't know what your actually going to get. Sometimes they have pictures, sometimes they don't. Sometimes its returned merchandise, sometimes it's office salvage.

As for me, i decided to try the high road and bid on boxes of IPods. I figure, even broken, it can be sold for $60 each. I bid on a box of 30 and a box of 50, no idea how good or bad condition they are. I am hoping I can FrankenPod them and maybe resell a few working ones to turn some profit, then either keep the rest for parts or auction them off as well.

There is a guy (or Two) on EBay right now that sells them. They seems to be doing pretty well for themselves. Selling them for $30+ each. At that point, it doesn't matter how much they go for each. Just pay about $25 or less each at wholesale and I should be OK. I would be looking about about $1000 profit or more, believe it or not.

Online Reselling

By basic is plan is to build a website using cascading style sheets. This means I can build one page, then use that template to replicate all the products I want to sell. I will then link them all through a free carting system I know of, then flow sales through PayPal. This is pretty much the same system I used years ago. The reason for building it manually, instead of an off-the-shelf system is cost. Using a pre-built cart would cost around $50.00 per month, plus setup fees. This way it will cost me $0 per month with $0 setup fees. That means more money in my pocket. Even if I wanted to expand, the pay version of this system is only $8/mo for 500 items.

Wholeselling

So, i made my way through all the diferent wholesellers on my list of several hundred. In the end, it came off to be a long list of items from an LTD catalog. Most of which I had no interest in at all, even though someone must be interested, obviously. What I narrowed it down to was to resell Board Games. The reason was the same as the adult stuff, bottom line was that were were only a few distributors I would need to deal with and be able to carry a decent selection of products. With Christmas here, I may be able to make a few bucks in the short term. From a brief email conversation I had with a distributor, I am apparently not he only person with this idea. He commented on the influx of new resellers.

AdWords Revisited

Apparently, all Ads placed on Google's AdWords system must be manually approved before being released into the wild. But, Now that it;s been OK'ed by some immortal being, it's cruising. In a few short hours, I've had over 1,200 ads placed, and had 6 hits (at .10 cents each, that's .60 cents). Here is the interesting part, with all the random keywords I chose (use your own imagination) by far, at over 80%, the number one keyword was (dramatic pause) Animal Sex.

Yeah, I know, right? It also sent me all 6 hits. Despite the topic (and the customers!) this shows a market for a product, which is what I was really hoping for. Once they get there, it's usual crap toys. If I was to target that market and advertise exclusively to them, selling products exclusively FOR them, I may well get a much better hit/miss ratio.

In my searching the other day, I remember seeing some blow up sheep or some such nonsense. Maybe I can find enough products and group them all together, then shoot at the target again.

Broken Ipods

There is quite a market for broken Ipods, believe it or not. You can buy them in bulk broken, take them apart, and put together a working one or two to sell. You can even resell the broken parts for profit. Seriously. I bought a broken Ipod and resold it a week later and profited $4.00. That was a profit of 5%, and it was infinitely less risk and hassle than the monitor was.

That case was buy one sell one. However, if I was to buy a lot 4 or more at about $40/ea then the profit margin would be closer to 40-50%. My only real issue would be constant packaging and inventory in/out. Of course, time to try and fix one can be an added expense as well, if I wanted to bother.

Advertising

While the mark-up on Adult Toys is crazy, and I am sure it makes plenty of money, the problem seems to be in advertising. Let's say there are 3 Toy distributors. Each vendor buys from them, but there are 1,300 vendors total. All 1,300 are either listed in some porn network, or they use Google AdWords. After 3 days, my ad has not come up once. Why? Too much competition.

The other problem is that there is no where else to list my products. Because of the adult nature, I am not allowed to list on Ebay, Froogle, Amazon, Overstock, or anywhere like that.

Seems that if I were to pursue this, I would need to take the Old-School Video Store approach. They openly rent regular movies, but in the back they rent the porn. So, i would need to setup a legitimate store to be seen on the big boys, but also sell the toys in the "back room". This would allow someone to buy a blender with a vibrator. While this may seem kinda silly, I wouldn't be surprised if it worked.

Porno Shop

When I was 18, people would ask me what I wanted to do with my life, and I said "Open a Porno Shop". 10 years later, people asked me what I was going to do, and I said "Open a Porno Shop". Two years ago, someone asked me how I planed on retiring, and I replied "With a Porno Shop".

Well, I was just comparing the DirectShip I mentioned in the last post with online stores vs. the wholesalers and I simply can NOT belive the markup on those sex toys. We are talking 40-50%... of pure profit. And If you ever seen the prices, that's not spare change, at all. I just compared this product (does it matter which?) and one store sold it for $75, another sold it for $59. My cost would be $40 to have it shipped from the warehouse, to your house. All that difference in the middle would go right into my pocket.

I am so all over this.

Ticket Sales

About 2 months ago I was given a ticket pre-sale invitation to buy concert tickets a month before the general public, and months before the show. I wanted to buy tickets for my family (6) but this was very expensive. So I bought 20 instead, heh. I had sold 4 on Ebay and 4 on StubHub. I had 6 for myself and still have 6 left to sell. At this point, I've paid up all the extra tickets, and like I said, I have 6 left. So, even if I sell them at cost, it will still pay for all of them, which was the whole point. Unfortunately, the show I have tickets for is proving to be difficult to sell because some other jack-off keeps under selling me taking my business. I am currently just above cost, and can't really go lower. Overall though, it should be worth it.

DropShipping

I think the Ebay idea was correct, but the execution sucked. The fact that some other guy flooded the marketplace with my product really pissed me of too. But this got me thinking, where did HE come up with all of them. The answer is likely in Wholesaling and Dropshipping. This would allow me to advertise hundreds of products, but not actually pay for any of them until after I was already paid, and the order placed. I list on Ebay, and when the order is placed, I give the shipping address to the warehouse and they ship directly to my customer. I profit the difference. I've spent the day researching this topic and I came up with a valid list of wholesale warehouses willing to do business like this. Since I already had an online storefront years ago, I already have a working knowledge of how to setup a store that accepts credit cards for free. All I need to do is populate it with products, then drive traffic there via ebay, amazon, overstock, froogle, and others like that. I am a really big fan of runing a business that doesn't involve me doing much of anything, even receiving the funds into my bank is automatic. If I use Andale, I can honestly set it, and forget it.